Shadows of the Heart
by Amethyst Uzumaki
Summary: Ayane Shimizu had been as average as any other herbology student, just more Japanese. Life so far for her had been nothing amazing. So imagine her surprise when she woke up in an infant's body after her death. Femslash/Yuri main pairing. Female OC. Polygamous relationship.
1. Average Ways to Die

**AN1: This story will possibly contain a polygamous femslash pairing. If you don't like it, then don't read it.**

 **Chapter Rating: T (some language and violence)**

 **DISCLAIMER: I only my OCs, not YouTube or Naruto.**

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My death was...ordinary to say in the least. Or it was compared to the thousands and thousands of ways to die.

I mean, No one ever quite wants to think about their death, finding it to be an uncomfortable subject, whether because they are afraid of an end to everything they knew or simply because they just cannot grasp the concept of nothingness.

In my case however, I welcomed the change. (And what came after it.)

 **- _Flashback_ -**

The classroom's clock ticked mockingly from its position over the professor's desk, overlooking the senior students that were taking a college Herbology exam.

One of the students was a young woman dressed in black skinny jeans, a white t-shirt with the villain Poison Ivy in the middle, and dark silver converse.

At the top of her test packet was the japanese name 'Ayane Shimizu'.

The woman, Ayane, tapped her pencil nervously, oblivious to the irritation it was causing to those around her.

She squeaked slightly when a loud alarm began to go off, signaling the end of the test.

Had an hour passed that quickly? The exam hadn't been too difficult and she'd only had trouble with the 'Pick one poison and describe its plant' question, meaning she'd had to describe its color. It was a good thing she minored in Toxicology.

The problem with that? She was color blind. Not just a red-green colorblind, but completely color blind, which was annoying and made driving a car so much harder.

She finished shoving her stuff in her bag and picked up the test to hand into her professor.

Once she had reached outside of the building she glanced at her wristwatch* (A black tactical watch equipped with a compass, and flashlight), and began to make her way back to her shared apartment.

As she was turning onto a sidestreet she felt droplets of water begin to sprinkle her bare arms, eventually turning into a full downpour.

She groaned in annoyance. Now she would have to put effort into taking a shower when she got to her apartment when she had just wanted to go to sleep the moment she got back.

A metal can clinked against the alley way's brick wall.

Ayane whipped her head around towards the noise, her hand already inching towards her small container of pepper spray.

A rough hand clapped over her mouth and an arm circled her waist, forcefully pulling her into the person behind her.

She attempted screaming but only lost her breath and earned a slap to the back of her head.

"I just want your money...so don't resist," A deep voice whispered.

Her response was to struggle harder. What? She was broke, and she didn't think that her captor would react kindly to this news.

So she decided to try one of those self defense moves she had seen on YouTube.

She bit her captor's hand and quickly used his lack of attention to bring her foot up and kick out his knee, following it up by scraping the edge of her shoe against his bare skin and slamming her heel against the bone of his foot.**

He stumbled back and grunted in pain while Ayane stood there for a second.

 _Wow I'm skilled_ , she thought.

She began to run back the way she had come from, where there were plenty of people that could possibly help her.

She heard a bang and then she was sprawled awkwardly on the ground.

She pried her eyes open (when had she closed them?) and shifted her gaze to where white hot waves of pain were flaring from.

"Well shit…" She choked out, chuckling wetly.

Her once clean white shirt was soaked in dark blood leaking from the giant hole in her stomach.

 _I was actually looking forwards to that shower_ …she thought as her vision grew black.

And then her heart stopped and Ayane Shimizu ceased to exist.

 _ **-End Flashback**_ -

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 **AN2: Meh...a little on the short side but it's just a prologue! I promise the actual chapters will be twice the length!**

 ***- I'm not a watch person so I really don't know a lot about watches but if I had a watch I would have one like this.**

 ****- This is a self defense move from Bruce Tegner. He has really good tips and a few books if you're looking for stuff like that.**

 ** _Lookout for a Poll on character pairings!_**


	2. Chakra Supervision

**AN1: Updates might not be constant because I am working on two other stories at this point. I will attempt to update every two weeks or so.**

 **Chapter Rating: T (language and violence)**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, only my OCs and the twisted plot line.**

 ** _Italics_ can be a person's thoughts, or an emphasized word. Some thoughts are put in regular script because they would usually be what Masumi would say out loud if she could speak yet.**

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- _Previous Chapter_ -

Her once clean white shirt was soaked in dark blood leaking from the giant hole in her stomach.

 _Dammit, now I won't see the next Naruto episode_ …she thought as her vision grew black.

And then her heart stopped and Ayane Shimizu ceased to exist.

- _Current Time_ -

My limbs felt like jelly and the stinging cold air caused my body to shiver.

 _Didn't I die?_

I pulled my eyes open to examine my surroundings and confusion filled me when all I could make out was a smear of colors and blurry shapes. So I either have a concussion or I'm having a really lucid dream.

 _Color_? That makes absolutely no sense because the last time I checked I was color blind.

I waved a hand in front of my eyes, trying to focus on the tiny limb. My movements were sluggish and my body felt foreign, filling me with the utter feeling of wrongness.

Wait a second... _tiny_ hand?

My eyes widened in shock and I brought my hand even closer to my face.

I wiggled my newfound short fingers that were attached to an equally pudgy fist and vaguely noted that my muscle control was absolutely horrible.

What the...Am I in a brat's body?

That would at least explain the undeveloped eyes and the almost nonexistent control over my limbs.

What it didn't explain was the pool of warmth that started in my chest and spread throughout my tiny body.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the warm feeling, noticing that is felt locked or separate somehow.

My concentration slipped as a loud sound reached my frail ears and my eyes slipped open to investigate what it had been.

A poorly made out face appeared in the center of my vision. The person had pale skin with a purplish tint and their greenish-gold eyes were slitted like a snake.

The purple tattoos that started at the far corner of their eyes looked familiar..so much that I was sure I had seen this person somewhere before.

My eyes squinted slightly, probably making myself look weird, whilst trying to put a name to the snake-like person before me.

"Oh shit," I whispered out loud, or at least I tried to. Only a few gurgles came out.

First I wake up to an entirely new body. And now Orochimaru the pedo-snake was staring down at me.

I handled my fear like any other responsible adult that had been stuck in a newborn's body.

By wailing. Loudly.

Orochi-pedo frowned in annoyance down at me and moved farther away and out of my line-of-sight, causing me to quiet down and sigh in relief.

A sharp and sudden noise caught my ears, although muffled, and a blur of white appeared.

Orochimaru, now reduced to a blob of an off-white color, approached the white blur.

After a few seconds of listening to muffled buzzing, I realized it was them talking, their voices distant and sounding like absolute gibberish to me.

Orochimaru, and what I believed was a hospital nurse, had been talking for a few minutes now, leaving me to investigate my new body.

I slowly sat up, my body not being used to the position yet, and gazed down at myself.

My skin that was left uncovered by a blanket was blemish free and had a light tan, which I hoped would darken to Ayane's olive tone as I grew older.

When I'd woken up in my new body I'd realized that I'd felt different somehow, my mind had felt...layered somehow. Like maybe I wasn't the only one inhabiting the body.

My eyes widened in horror for a moment after remembering that I had been born into a new body, a body where I wasn't sure yet if I was of the female gender.

I dropped back onto the mattress I had been sitting on in relief after determining I still thankfully had female anatomy and wondered when Orochimaru was going to leave, finding his occasional glances in my direction annoying.

The blanket that had been covering me slipped off of my frame from my uncomfortable shuffling, me feeling a bit overheated from the flowing of warmness throughout my entire body.

Huh. That's kind of weird. Then again, nothing's probably going to be normal in this world.

I concentrated on the warm feeling and was confused when I could feel it rushing swiftly away from a large mass of the warmth.

..Was that...chakra? It would explain the larger pool of warmness as chakra coils, and why I was feeling overheated. But why did I have it again?..

Oh, right. From the looks of it, I have somehow done the impossible and been reborn into the anime Naruto. Oh joy.

Who knew Orochimaru liked to talk so much, I grumbled in my head.

It'd been about 10 minutes since the maybe-nurse had appeared and I was bored. And getting sleepy.

Hn. Might as well go to sleep. This whole thing with me dying and being reincarnated might just happen be a really lucid dream and I'll wake up finding that I fell asleep during class.

With my decision made, I shuffled around on the bed to find a comfortable position and drifted into unconsciousness.

* * *

I was awakened from the feeling of being lifted gently from my bed and being held to a warm and soft chest.

My eyes peel open and I'm met with the sight of cleavage.

Umm, well this is awkward on my part. Meh.

Hmm. How to get out of this situation. It's not that I'm uncomfortable in her arms, but because I want to tell whoever it is that's holding me I'm really hungry.

So, from all the movies I've seen, I'm supposed to cry..right? Welp, let's give it a try.

I flail my arms around and begin sob. Nailed it.

The person me holding shifts me so that she's holding me a few inches from her face. It was surprisingly fun to be held up by another person.

"Is Masumi-chan hungwy?" The lady tiredly asked, her words pitched in the typical 'baby voice'.

So that's my new name...It sounds pretty nice, even though I have no idea what it means. What if meant something like rice field? I mean no offense, but I would like to have a less generic name.

I wail some more and the woman pulls me back into the crook of her elbow, slowly walking to our destination.

Using my close proximity, I examined the woman's face.

Straight bright red hair framed a narrow pale face and made the lady's dark violet eyes pop, her forehead equipped with a small red swirl tattoo. *****

The woman holding me was obviously an Uzumaki, which didn't really make any sense. Weren't they supposed to be practically extinct in the Naruto world or something?

A small sigh escaped my mouth. The next few years were going to be long and confusion filled, with me trying to find out when I had been born into the storyline and deciding if I wanted to join the main plot. Decisions, decisions.

* * *

 _Timeskip: 2 years later; Age 2_

It's been about two years since my birth and Orochi-pedo decided to start teaching me the Japanese alphabet and words early, him having caught onto my higher level of intelligence after me seeming to react to certain conversations around me.

I had figured it would be better to not hide my ability of learning things easier, thanks to me already knowing Japanese from my previous life, though I had to dumb myself down so they wouldn't suspect something.

My okāsan and Orochimaru taught me low level ninja-academy classes like how to correctly hold a kunai and throw them, though I never even got close to the target, and also helped me with my kanji writing skills.

Oh right, I had found out that the nice Uzumaki lady that I had woken up to was my mother when she and Orochimaru had been arguing about how she was my mother so she could decide whether or not I was to begin taking more difficult ninja classes. (She had guts, even on my best day I wouldn't have argued with Orochimaru, he could get mean.)

After hearing that she was my mother I had been surprised but also relieved because the warm and comforting woman I had woken up to would be tied to me forever.

Because of this, Orochimaru grew to like me even less, which caused okasān to teach me most of the civilian classes.

I remember when we had gotten to the history of her old village, Uzushiogakure, and how upset she'd been. It made me sad to see how an entire village was destroyed just because they were stronger than the rest and people feared them.

- _Flashback_ -

"..And that's why they are known as the Three Sannin." Mother finished.

I finished taking notes about Tsunade, the only Sannin I found interesting, and sat back against the wall, stretching my limbs to rid them of any stiffness gathered from sitting in the same position for too long.

"What's next?" I asked, kicking my legs out to rest my feet against the table we were using.

Because I had decided to not hide my intelligence I learned things much quicker and was already technically

She swatted my feet off the desk and reached for her lesson plan booklet that they had been resting on.

After flipping to about two-thirds of the way through the booklet she stopped on a page and scanned it for a few moments before finding what she had been searching for.

She tensed in her position sitting beside me at the wall and I glanced up at her curiously from picking at the cuticles of my nails.

"Uzushiogakure." She answered slowly, her voice forlorn.

Oh. No wonder she was sad. I mean, I would be upset too if my original village that I had lived decades at had been destroyed.

"That was your home-village right?" I asked to break the silence.

She nodded and I felt a drop of something wet land on my bare arm, concern filling me when I realized that she was crying.

Yes, she was only the biological mother to my current body, but I had grown to love her more than my actual mother. It also helped that I had never been close to my family in my previous life, so it'd been a welcomed change to be able to rely on another person.

I turned my body to her and climbed into her lap to hug her, thankful that I was still small enough to do that.

Her arms wrapped around my small body and she rested her chin on the top of my head.

We sat like that for a few minutes, me awkwardly patting her back and humming a tune faintly and her sniffling quietly into my hair.

Okasān's chest moved minutely from barely audible chuckling and she shifted us around so that we were lying down on the cushioned bench with me resting on top of her.

"Why're you laughing?" I was confused. She was just crying about the loss of her village and then she randomly starts laughing. Maybe she's bi-polar?

"You're bad at comforting people." She admitted bluntly.

I pouted and crossed my arms stubbornly.

"Sumi-chan, you were humming a song from the soundtrack of The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi movie."

I flushed, having not realized that I had been humming this world's equivalent of the Mission Impossible theme song.

"It's okay, I wouldn't expect much from a two year old." She teased.

I rolled my eyes at the harmless age jab and smiled. I try to comfort her and she insults my age.

I guess I'll find a way to get back at her. Probably in the form of drawing a beard on her face when she's sleeping. _Oh yes. This will be fun_ , I cackle mentally.

- _Flashback End_ -

Eventually I began to wonder what I looked like. If Okasān had red hair, did I? Did my hair have cool spikes like Kushina Uzumaki? Did I have violet eyes too? Shortly after these questions took root in my mind I began actively looking for reflective objects.

I was unsuccessful in my searches. You would think being in a ninja occupied space you would find some nice and shiny weapons lying around, but no, I had zero luck.

The bathrooms I used never had any mirrors and were just toilets and sinks and my okasān or any other ninja weren't allowed to use weapons or jutsu around me due to the fact that they would probably hurt my grabby-two year old self.

I sighed, shifting my position at the desk I was sitting at and flipped to the next page of one of the few books piled on my desk.

Momentarily forgetting the subject of the book I was reading due to boredom, I dog-eared the page I was on and flipped back to the cover.

Chakra Manipulation and Flow by Ryobe Tsukimoto

Blegh. Don't get me wrong, It was cool and interesting to read about all the different places you could enhance with your chakra, but it was losing its shine due to the fact I wasn't permitted to use chakra myself yet.

My reserves were definitely large for a kid my age, especially when compared to another female because we generally tended to have smaller pools. I'm guessing it's due to my Uzumaki genetics and our insane chakra amounts, and because of all the meditation I did.

After re-reading the same sentence for the third time I snapped and hurled the book at the wall and watched in horror as it crashed through the plaster and thunked onto the cement floor outside.

"Huh." I commented curiously, blinking my eyes to get rid of the random tingling in them. "Didn't think that would happen."

I walked over to the book shaped hole next to my door to inspect it, wondering how I'd been able to throw the book that hard and fast.

"Ohhhh." I gasped in surprise, a figurative light bulb appearing over my head.

Somehow I had unconsciously used chakra. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the jagged hole and the book lying outside of my room.

Yep. I could see it lining the hole and book. Chakra sensing for me was like if you close your eyes and you can see light through your closed lids, except I could see the chakra lingering everywhere from a day ago to over a week ago.

I could only sense things with my eyes closed so far, hopefully I would eventually have enough skill to sense things with my eyes open. Maybe I would eventually be able to determine the different types of chakra (the different elemental types and things like medical ninjutsu), and be able to sense jutsu used far longer ago.

"Hey Masumi-chan I thought I heard…" My okasān's, Oriko, voice trailed off.

I audibly gulped.

She calmly pulled the door open, it thumping lightly against the wall, and stalked behind me slowly.

It was eerily quiet and from my position still staring at the hole, my body stiff. I had used chakra unsupervised. She was going to be _so_ mad.

I felt her hands turn me around, surprisingly gentle in her angry state, and kneel to be closer in height to my short 2 year old self.

Her hand lifted my chin, which was lowered from looking at the ground guiltily, and stared into my eyes.

I almost squeeked out loud at the angry look in her eyes, but thankfully caught myself.

Okasān was really scary when she was mad. Her eyes would practically glow from anger and shadows seemed to appear over her face to sharpen her features.

Maybe it was a genjutsu?

Violet eyes narrowed and her gaze locked onto my eyes and the area surrounding them, her thumb approaching my face rub at my eyelid.

"Sumi-chan, were you playing with make-up?" She inquired with a puzzled tone, all traces of anger gone.

That was a random question. But maybe it'd made her forget about me being in trouble.

"No, you know I don't like that kind of stuff, okasān." I responded in bewilderment.

I would never wear girly clothes.

My face screwing up in disgust at the thought of myself in a pink frilly dress and far too much make up. I liked my baggy cargo pants and mesh t-shirt a lot.

She continued to gaze at my eyes in concern and confusion.

"Is there something wrong with my eyes?" I asked her.

Looking as if she was contemplating something she shrugged at me and explained that she thought she'd seen something.

I sighed in relief, it looked like she had forgotten-

"You're still in trouble baka."

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 **AN2: Finished! Will hopefully see you guys in a week or so. Also yes, I think Orochimaru is really creepy, and not just because he looks like a snake. No offense if you have a really generic name, my name literally means youth.**

 ***Might Gai going nuts about youthfulness***

 ***1: I based the description of her mother off of Kushina because of the lack of information regarding the Uzumaki clan's appearance (besides the typical red spiky hair)**

 **(Check out my author profile for a poll on future character pairings.)**

 ** _Make sure to review!_**

 **CHAPTER WORD COUNT GOAL: 2,500-3,000**

 **Chapter Word Count:**

 **2,956**


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